Comments by "Frank DeMaris" (@kemarisite) on "The Drydock - Episode 131" video.

  1. Eric Hammel mentions a US destroyer that had been in a collision and received a patch of whatever steel plate was available. So for about 20 feet on one side the exterior shell was, say, 5/8" thick instead of the 3/8" thickness of the original construction. The crew jokingly called that their "armor belt"
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  2. That was my first thought on that question, but in comparison with some of those others it is more understandable as Atlanta had eaten a torpedo aand some shells and drifted into San Francisco's line of fire.
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  3. Even if we blame Hoover for the deaths of all 600 of Juneau's crew (rather than the 100 or so who made it into the water when she was sunk), he still got fewer men killed needlessly than Halsey did in Typhoon Cobra (790). Hoover had two intact ships (Fletcher and Helena) escorting three, now two cripples (San Francisco and Sterrett). He had just witnessed Juneau vanish in a massive magazine detonation. Comparable explosions had left 0 survivors of about 900 crew (HMS Defence), 6 of 1026 (HMS Invincible), 18 of 1,284 (HMS Queen Mary), 3 of 1,019 (HMS Indefatigable), and 3 of 1,421 (HMS Hood). There was simply no reason to believe there might be any noticeable number of survivors left in the water after that detonation. In the mean time, Hoover was still escorting two cripples away from the battle area and a known sub contact. One can argue that Hoover should have signaled Juneau's loss and location by radio, rather than signaling a patrolling B-17 by lamp, since the Japanese sub had obviously seen him and made radio detection moot, but it really is unfounded to say he should have detached one of his two functional ships to prosecute the sub contact and/or search for survivors, or had one of his float planes go back to look and then stop to recover it (possibly) in front of another Japanese sub since several were believed to be lurking in the area. The Juneau survivors were rescued November 20-21, while Halsey relieved Hoover of command of Helena on November 23. It seems clear that Halsey relieved Hoover not because of Hoover's actions and knowledge available at the time, but only with the benefit of hindsight that there had been a significant number of survivors in the water and the failure to rescue those survivors promptly was embarrassing to Halsey.
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  4. That's "Lusty Old Vannamoinen" if you go and read the Kalevala.
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  5. Yes, and the US fast battleships required some modifications to the torpedo defense system because of the interaction between the armor belt and the top of the torpedo bulkhead.
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